Meet the One Nation candidate who wants to be kingmaker

Muslims shouldn’t be in Australia. Single mothers are a “drag on society”. Global warming is “nonsense”.

22/02/2017 One Nation candidate for Pilbara David Archibald. WA State Election, Port Hedland which is part of the seat of Pilbara, WA. pic Colin Murty The Australian

Muslims shouldn’t be living in Australia. Single mothers are a “drag on society”. Aborigines have not suffered past injustices. Global warming is “nonsense”.

These are some of the views of One Nation’s Pilbara candidate, self-styled polymath David Archibald, who believes the resurgence of Pauline Hanson’s anti-establishment party in Western Australia will propel him into state parliament at next month’s ­election.

Mr Archibald, a geologist who resigned his Liberal Party membership only last year, reckons he could be kingmaker after March 11 and if the contest is close he might even be able to wangle a cabinet seat in exchange for his support.

“I’d like to be minister for ­resources and I’d also get the EPA (Environmental Protection Authority) under me so I can fire them,” he says, with just a slight glint.

His confidence may be a bit overstated but it is not without some foundation.

The Pilbara mining region was One Nation’s strongest across the state at last year’s Senate election. When measured against state boundaries, One Nation polled 10.4 per cent of the vote in the Pilbara­, or 2½ times its total statewide support.

With Newspoll suggesting One Nation’s support has now risen to 13 per cent across the state, party officials believe they will win more than 30 per cent of the prim­ary vote in Pilbara at the election.

And that would mean that Mr ­Archibald has some chance of snatching the seat from the ­Nationals.

In his first major interview, conducted this week in the iron ore mining town of Port Hedland, Mr Archibald offered up his views on a multitude of issues and scores of political figures.

Nationals leader Brendon Grylls, his main opponent in the Pilbara, is “evil”, Premier Colin Barnett is a “socialist” and Labor leader Mark McGowan is “not very bright”.

Federal Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is described as a “dripping-wet leftie” and fellow West Aust­ralian Liberal and federal Social Services Minister Christian Porter is a “bullshit artist”.

Mr Archibald, who sees himself as a true conservative unlike anyone else in Australian politics, was motivated to run for parliament by Mr Grylls’s announcement last year that he wanted to introduce an extra levy on Pilbara iron ore miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. “Getting rid of Brendon Grylls is very important to the ­future of this country,” he said.

He said the proposed tax hike would cost the Pilbara 3000 jobs and was being proposed only to help cover up the Liberal-­Nationals’ excessive spending, which had driven up net debt to more than $30 billion.

“They borrowed to the limit of their credit rating, mostly on vanity­ projects for Colin Barnett in Perth,” he said, claiming that the government’s Elizabeth Quay waterfront project would become “a brown pool collecting rubbish”.

Mr Archibald acknowledged that his strong views on issues such as Islam and “global cooling” were not at the forefront of most voters’ minds in the Pilbara.

He is “not in favour” of Islam and would prefer there were no Muslims in Australia, but kicking out those already settled here was probably going too far. In the meantime, he wants immigration from all countries suspended.

Mr Archibald said single mothers should not be entitled to welfare­ payments because they’d made a deliberate choice to fall pregnant and were “a drag on ­society”.

He disputed whether the Stol­en Generations existed but denied One Nation was a racist party, saying it treated all races equally.